The Raritan Blog

SeaMicro SM15000: Data Center in a Box for Virtualization, Cloud Computing, and Big Data

Herman Chan
October 2, 2012

After being acquired by AMD earlier this year for $334M, SeaMicro™ has recently introduced the SM15000™, packing gobs of compute, networking, and storage in a 10U box. With a design focus on flexibility, density, and energy efficiency for virtualization, cloud computing, and big data loads, the SM1500 offers your choice of up to 64 AMD Opteron™, up to 64 Intel® Xeon® (“Ivy Bridge”, “Sandy Bridge”), and up to 256 Intel Atom® processors. When the folks at SeaMicro say “data center in a box”, they mean it. The AMD SeaMicro SM15000 server doesn’t fall short on memory nor storage, supporting up to 4 terabytes (TB) of RAM — 64 GB per Piledriver processor — and up to 64 SATA drives. Network connectivity is provided by up to (16) 10 GbE ports or up to (64) 1 GbE connections. Freedom Fabric Storage provides scaling for up to 1,408 solid state or hard disk drives.

So how do we power such a beast? While it supports up to 10 1100 watt power supplies, AMD suggests that the average power consumption of a fully-loaded system is in the range of 3200 watts. That means a 42U rack full of them will require ~12,800 watts (12.8kW). Since most customers will opt for the 10 power supplies in a 5+5 configuration, the iPDU in the rack will require a minimum of 20 outlets. Some customers may even go more extreme and drop 5 of them in a 54U rack, which will require iPDUs supporting 16kW and a minimum of 25 outlets. At these power densities, your only real options would be to run 50A 208V 3 phase circuits (14.4kW) to the rack or 60A 208V 3 phase circuits (17.3kW) or 30A 400V 3 phase circuits (16.6kW). Check out our iPDU product selector to find the one that suits you best. Search for the ones with C13 outlets.

The density war continues….

Herman Chan
September 28, 2012

I read today that HP released its Proliant DL560 Gen8 Server Series with support for 4 Intel Xeon® CPUs, each CPU supporting 8, 6, or 4 cores. In addition, up to 1.5 TB of memory and 5 hot plug drives are supported. And, to boot, you get ALL this in a compact 2U package. That’s a lot of horsepower to help support increasing virtualized workloads.

Now, how would you power such a beast? Well, it comes with a pair of 1200W highly efficient 80 Plus rated power supplies. If you decide that you want to pack 20 of them in a 42U rack, you’d need to provision about 16KW of power to each rack in a rack iPDU with at least 20 C13 outlets. How did we get to 16KW? We made a simple assumption that the server may run @ 65% of nameplate or ~780 watts. 780 watts x 20 servers is just about 16KW. Your mileage will vary depending on what you decide to use as a nameplate de-rating assumption. Typical ranges fall somewhere between 60-70%. Given this, your choices to power a rack full of these will likely be one of 2 options depending on whether you’ve got 208V 3 phase or 400V 3 phase coming into the cabinets. They are: (A) a pair of 208V, 3 phase, 60A rack iPDUs providing 17.3KW of power or (B) a pair of 400V, 3 phase, 30A rack iPDUs providing 16.6KW of power. Check out our iPDU product selector to find the one that suits you.

Visit Us at AFCOM in Nashville – Learn and Maybe Even Win

Dorothy Ochs
September 27, 2012

Join us as we discuss how to successfully deploy high power to your racks, and how you can gain secure remote access to your data center

And stop by our booth (#644) to see our newest Power, DCIM and KVM solutions

Get a registration discount on us—Use code RARITANF12!

TWO PRESENTATIONS:

Effectively Deploying High Power in Data Centers

Date: Monday, October 1st at 2:30pm

Room: Lincoln C

Speaker: Greg More, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Raritan

Achieving Secure Remote and Local Access for Your Data Center

Date: Monday, October 1st at 9:45am

Room: Jackson CD

Speaker: Richard Dominach, Manager of KVM and Access Product Management at Raritan

We will have live demos at our booth (#644) and will be raffling an iPad. Be sure to stop by!

Event Details:

AFCOM Data Center World

Sep. 30th - Oct. 3rd

Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center

Nashville, TN

Register now: http://www.datacenterworld.com/fall2012/

NEW: Best-in-class security and mobile access with Dominion KX II-101-V2 Release 5.3

Paula Alves
September 19, 2012

Today Raritan released Dominion KX II-101-V2 Release 5.3, providing several enhancements that will delight both Government and non-Government users. With this new release, the Dominion KX II-101-V2 continues to be a leader in the one port KVM/IP class, offering the highest in video resolution, and becomes the only one in its class to offer mobile access (with CC-SG) and FIPS 140-2 encryption.

With mobile KVM access for iPhone and iPad, users can now access and control servers connected to the Dominion KX I-101-V2 via their Apple iPhones and iPads. This provides emergency 24x7 out-of-hours access, as well as convenient everyday access for iPad enthusiasts. CC-SG Release 5.2 or later is required for this capability.

To meet the changing technology needs of KVM customers, the Dominion KX II-101-V2 now supports High Definition (HD), 1080p remote video resolution. In addition, popular widescreen formats are supported including 1600x1200, 1680x1050 and 1440x900, so remote users can work with today’s higher resolution monitors.

For government, military and other high security applications, the Dominion KX II-101-V2 is the first device in its class to use a validated FIPS 140-2 Cryptographic Module for enhanced encryption. Modules tested and validated as conforming to FIPS 140-2 are accepted by federal agencies of the U.S. and Canada for the protection of sensitive information. Other security features, including IPv6, security banner, and SNMPv3 are also supported with this new release.

For more information, please access our website.